Wilderness of Sin

“ It has been well observed that each of the three recorded temptations of our Lord in the wilderness is a suggestion, not of an act of overt sin, but of an act of wilfulness, that state directly opposed to obedience, and out of which springs all that foolishness which is bound up in the heart of a child. ”

“ Nor has God separated you from men; he has placed you in society. Each individual is created and born for the sake of other individuals. But observe, wherever you are and whatever your station, you are, I say, to flee the world.
HOW TO ESCAPE THE WORLD.
18. But how are we to flee the world? Not by donning caps and creeping into a corner or going into the wilderness. You cannot so escape the devil and sin. Satan will as easily find you in the wilderness in a gray cap as he will in the market in a red coat. ”

“ It teaches us, that the world in which we live, is also in a disordered, irregular state, and cursed for the sake of man; that it is no longer the paradise that God made it, but the remains of a drowned world, full of marks of God’s displeasure, and the sin of its inhabitants.
That it is a mere wilderness, a state of darkness, a vale of misery, where vice and madness, dreams and shadows, variously please and torment the short, miserable lives of men. ”

“ That all those who had now grown up to men's estate should die in the wilderness, not all at once, but by degrees. They wished that they might die in the wilderness, and God said Amen to their passionate wish, and made their sin their ruin, snared them in the words of their mouth, and caused their own tongue to fall upon them, took them at their word, and determined that their carcases should fall in the wilderness, v. ”

“ The prince of this world is the Devil, thus all hell; to glorify is to make the Human Divine. The reason why only the temptation after forty days in the wilderness is mentioned is, that forty days signify and involve temptations to the full, thus of many years; the wilderness signifies hell ”

“ If ever God lead us back into the wilderness, it will be because of these sins. And therefore, if ever ye would have blessed days, you must make it your great business to remove these nineteen mountains, and repent of these land-devouring and soul-destroying abominations. ”

“ Name it as we choose: with or without visible Devil, whether in the natural Desert of rocks and sands, or in the populous moral Desert of selfishness and baseness,—to such Temptation are we all called. Unhappy if we are not! Unhappy if we are but Half-men, in whom that divine handwriting has never blazed forth, all-subduing, in true sun-splendour; but quivers dubiously amid meaner lights: or smoulders, in dull pain, in darkness, under earthly vapours!—Our Wilderness is the wide World in an Atheistic Century ”

“ Unknown, or extremest Hell, the habitation of the devils, and the place to which they are at present gone. The vast wilderness, over part of which you have come, is called the country of Despair, a place intended for the lost until the Day of Judgment, when it will fall into extremest, bottomless Hell, and the two will become one. ”

“ Are all the other Instruments of thy Vengeance, too good for the chastisement of such transgressors as we are? Must the very Devils be sent out of Their own place, to be our Troublers: Must we be lash'd with Scorpions, fetch'd from the Place of Torment? Must this Wilderness be made a Receptacle for the Dragons of the Wilderness? ”

“ So long as he could wander unmolested over the pathless mountain track, or exist in the arid desert, the timid follower of Christ not only avoided torture or violent death, but escaped what he dreaded more—the hazard of apostacy under extreme trial. Having once effected his retreat, and borne for a time the loss of friends and comforts, he soon acquired physical habits and intellectual tastes which rendered a life in the wilderness not only tolerable but agreeable. ”

“ And I will bring you into the wilderness of the people, and there will I plead with you face to face.—God will bring them into a wilderness condition of separateness from the world and of ostracism and persecution by the revolutionary and anarchistic masses, and face to face He will plead with the nominal church to forsake evil and idolatry. ”

“ Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit. They that see thee shall narrowly look upon thee, and consider thee, saying:—Is this the man that made the earth to tremble, that did shake kingdoms, that made the world as a wilderness? ”

“ Would you have more of those horrid and odious temptations? 5. You are purposely turned here into a wilderness, among wild beasts; you are as lambs among wolves, and through many tribulations you must enter into heaven. You must deny yourselves, and take up your cross, and forsake all that you have; and all that will live godly in Christ Jesus, must suffer persecution; in the world you must have trouble: the seed of the serpent must bruise your heel, before God bruise Satan under your feet! ”

“ The history of the sacred volume does not contain a record of as great and wonderful a miracle as the fleeing of this people into the wilderness, robbed of every earthly thing that could make life desirable, driven before the muskets of the Christian mob, exposed to the vicissitudes of new climates, and exploring into the mountains in a new and desert country, and contending with every difficulty that the devil could introduce, and with all the clamor and calumny that could be invented to harden the hearts of men and women against them. ”

“ The Prophet says that, when Jesus comes with vengeance and destroys the wicked, redeems the desert, and causes the wilderness to become a fruitful field, then the lame man shall leap as a hart, the tongue of the dumb shall speak, the ears of the deaf shall be unstopped, for in the wilderness shall waters break out, and streams in the desert, and the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water. ”

“ Hell, damnation, eternal tortures, painful theological hair-splittings, harrowing self-examinations, and humiliating public confessions—this is what they gather on the narrow wooden benches to listen to hour after hour, searching their souls for sin with an almost frenzied eagerness. ”

“ In the city of Hell nothing is to be seen but dismal dungeons, dark caverns, frightful deserts, fetid swamps filled with every imaginable species of poisonous and disgusting reptile. In Heaven you behold the happiness and peaceful union of the saints; in Hell, perpetual scenes of wretched discord, and every species of sin and corruption, either under the most horrible forms imaginable, or represented by different kinds of dreadful torments. ”

“ He stretches himself on the ground as if dead, and waits till the apes descend from the trees. The moment he sees that they have descended, he springs up, seizes on them, and devours them. It is thus the devil acts: he makes the temptation appear to be dead; but when a soul descends, and exposes herself to the occasion of sin, he stirs up temptation, and devours her. Oh! how many miserable souls, devoted to spiritual things, to mental prayer, to frequent communion, and to a life of holiness, have, by exposing themselves to the occasion of sin, become the slaves of the devil! ”

“ The river of evil is ever wider and deeper, and more tumultuous. The little sins get in at the window, and open the front door for the full-grown house-breakers. One smooths the path for the other. All sin has an awful power of perpetuating and increasing itself. As the prophet says in his vision of the doleful creatures that make their sport in the desolate city, 'None of them shall want her mate. The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with the wild beasts of the island.' Every sin tells upon character, and makes the repetition of itself more and more easy. ”

“ Sometimes our wilderness is a perfumed garden, through which insidious devils dog our laggard footsteps. Sometimes it is a shaded pleasaunce, through which we tread with stately steps, unwitting of the derisive demons that smile as they mock our pageantry of pride. With retrospective agony, we turn to gaze upon the mirages of these scenes, as one views sunlit seas where wrecks have been, and cry aloud, "Here much precious treasure was lost!" But there are other wildernesses wherein we wander, consciously beset with Evil Spirits whose faces we know.
It was thus with Myron Holder. ”

“ Our Lord, by His knowledge, thus overthrew the words of a great transgressor in His temptation in the wilderness, and it is by the spread of this knowledge of God which He has Himself preserved to us that the final overthrow of evil will be accomplished. ”

“ A land of darkness - Have you, since you passed through the wilderness, and came out of the darkness of Egypt, ever been brought into similar circumstances? You have had food and all the necessaries of life for your bodies; and my ordinances and word to enlighten and cheer your souls. I have neither been a wilderness nor a land of darkness to you.
We are lords - We wish to be our own masters; we will neither brook religious nor civil restraint; we will regard no laws, human or Divine. It was this disposition that caused them to fall in so fully with the whole system of idolatry. ”

“ But not only by communion, but also by conduct, must we keep in the light. The fugitive found outside the city of refuge was fair game for the avenger, and if he strayed beyond its bounds there was a sword in his back before he knew where he was. Every Christian, by each sin, whether it be acted or only thought, casts himself out of the light into the darkness that rings it round, and out there he is a victim to the beasts of prey that hunt in darkness. ”

“ Her guests, that are treated with those stolen waters, are not only in the highway to hell and at the brink of it, but they are already in the depths of hell, under the power of sin, led captive by Satan at his will, and ever and anon lashed by the terrors of their own consciences, which are a hell upon earth. ”

“ No peace or rest there either for the deer or the pig, or the little grey mongoose. They have sinned, and are far from Nirvana and happiness; and, like the she-devil, they sin again only to bring more evil on themselves by their blindness. ”

“ He believes that evil spirits walk at the sunset hour by the edge of forests; he adores the devil, who is thought to haunt burial-grounds and, in mortal terror of his enmity, leaves food for him in the woods. ”

“ Weeping eyes terrify the devil; he fears the onslaught of tears bursting forth, as one would flee a tempest of hail driven by the fury of all the winds. As the torrent's rush cleanses the river-bed, the flowing tears purge the weeper's mind from the devil's tares and every pest of sin. ”

“ Does not our camp still feel from that sin and the punishment of it? We are not cleansed from it unto this day; there are remaining sparks," First, "Of the infection of that sin; some among us so inclined to idolatry that if you set up another altar they will soon take occasion from that, whether you intend it or no, to worship another God." Secondly, "Of the wrath of God against us for that sin. We have reason to fear that, if we provoke God by another sin to visit, he will remember against us the iniquity of Peor, as he threatened to do that of the golden calf, Exod. ”

“ To the poor multitude the earth was a kind of enchanted forest, full of demons ready to devour, and theological serpents lurking, with infinite power, to fascinate and torture the unhappy and impotent soul. Life to them was a dim and mysterious labyrinth, in which they wandered weary, and lost, guided by priests as bewildered as themselves, without knowing that at every step the Ariadne of reason offered them the long lost clue. ”

“ Christ's departure makes the best furnished, best replenished place a wilderness, though it be the temple, the chief place of concourse; for what comfort can there be where Christ is not? Though there may be a crowd of other contentments, yet, if Christ's special spiritual presence be withdrawn, that soul, that place, is become a wilderness, a land of darkness, as darkness itself. This comes of men's rejecting Christ, and driving him away from them. ”

“ Ingratitude, Unbelief, Discontent and Murmuring, were the dominant Passions in the Wilderness; they were always quarrelling with God and Moses: never easy, no not under a Theocracy, a divine Government. No wonder that Rage and Faction haunt the Dwellings of good 187Princes, when we find perverse Spirits have murmur’d at a divine Administration. ”

“ And so with every inclination which originates in the love of self, and whose indulgence is condemned by the Lord's commandments, being utterly contrary to their whole spirit and teaching. These inclinations are all of them but streams which flow from hell; and their existence and craving are indications of the presence of hell within us. And it is only when we regard and shun their indulgence as a sin against God, that we are really shunning hell. ”

“ There was a time when people believed the infamy commanded in this frightful passage. There was a time when they did desert fathers and mothers and wives and children. St. Augustine says to the devotee: Fly to the desert, and though your wife put her arms around your neck, tear her hands away; she is a temptation of the devil. Though your father and mother throw their bodies athwart your threshold, step over them; and though your children pursue, and with weeping' eyes beseech you to return, listen not. It is the temptation of the evil one. Fly to the desert and save your soul. ”